Finding the Real 'Missing Link'

Some of the most inconclusive and misleading reports ever published fall into the category of alleged evolutionary breakthroughs.

English journalist and novelist
George Orwell said:
‘Early in life I had noticed
that no event is ever correctly
reported in a newspaper.’

Orwell was exaggerating of course.
He had no way of knowing every fact in
every newspaper to judge whether it was
correct or not. And journalists who
subscribe to their industry’s code of
ethics should at least be able to produce
unbiased news reports.

But it would be interesting to test
Orwell’s conclusion against reports over
the years dealing with claims of potential
breakthroughs in evolution. Some of the
most inconclusive and misleading reports
ever published fall into the category
of alleged evolutionary breakthroughs.

One which we recently featured in
Creation magazine was the blatantly
misleading story about ‘Nebraska man’,
which appeared in The London Illustrated
News of June 24, 1922. Only a
single worn tooth of a pig had been
unearthed, but the newspaper told readers
‘the earliest man’ had been found.
Despite lack of agreement among scientists,
the headline said it was an ‘astounding
discovery’ of human remains. Only
after some years was it revealed that the
tooth was actually a pig’s.

Such ‘missing link’ claims appear in
newspapers regularly. For instance,
Melbourne’s Sunday Herald-Sun of June
23, 1991, headlined a story: ‘Missing
link’ found. Most readers, conditioned
to accept evolution as fact, would surely
imagine from that headline that something
like a part-ape, part-man had been
discovered. The story seems to reinforce
the theory of evolution, or even put it beyond dispute.

But all that was found in this case was a fossilized piece of jawbone in Namibia which contained a few teeth.

But all that was found in this case was
a fossilized piece of jawbone in Namibia
which contained a few teeth. It wasn’t a
creature which clearly linked man and
ape-like animals at all. The report in fact
tones down its claim later in the story by
saying the jawbone belonged to an animal
that ‘may have been’ man’s ancestor.
The discoverer said this animal
‘probably’ walked on all four feet and
‘probably’ had a long back sloping
upwards. That’s nothing definite, yet the
newspaper headline said of these few
teeth that the ‘missing link’ had been
found.

If the ‘missing link’ which allegedly
proves man and ape have evolved from
the same animal has been found, why not
stop the search? The reason is that none
of these ‘missing link found’ headlines is
accurate, yet they are surprisingly common.
The average reader should realize
they’re not accurate, because they continue
to appear year after year. If all
readers of such stories stopped to analyse
exactly what was found, and question
just which parts of the alleged evolutionary
chain each ‘link’ was supposed to
join, there would be fewer convinced
evolutionists among the general public.

Our Focus section in this issue of
Creation magazine reports several of the
latest ‘missing link’ news items. Hardly
a month goes by without some news
report of an evolutionary ‘missing link’
discovery, for either humans or other
creatures. Typically, the find is said to
be potentially enlightening for a better
understanding of the theory of evolution.
But that’s as far as it ever goes. In time
they all lose credibility as ‘missing link’
candidates. ‘Piltdown man’, Neanderthal
man, Cro-magnon man, ‘Java man’,
coelacanths, Archaeopteryx, ‘Lucy’,
Ramapithecus, ‘Nebraska man’…the
list of discarded or disputed ‘missing
links’ reads like a Who’s Who of fossil
bloopers and practical jokes.

Newspaper reporters have to get their
information from somewhere of course.
And reporting the discovery of a ‘missing
link’ attracts more attention than
reporting the discovery of an old legbone
or a tooth no one can identify with
certainty. But the truth is that evolutionary
‘missing links’ will always be missing.
The theory of evolution is incapable
of finding the link to prove how everything
could evolve from nothing, how
life could evolve from non-life, or how
one kind of creature could evolve into a
completely different kind when it
doesn’t have the genetic coding to do so.

What’s missing from the thinking of
those who write newspaper reports
which deal with these subjects is the recognition
that the Book of Genesis may be
correct when it tells us how everything
came into existence, how life came from
non-life, how long it took, and how various
kinds of animals appeared fully
formed on earth right from the beginning.
The part that is missing from such
news reports is the part about God the
Creator.

The Bible tells us that all things were
created by and for Jesus Christ. If the
Bible is correct on this, it is also correct
in telling us that Jesus Christ is the link
between sinful man and a righteous God.
That is the link which is missing in so
many lives. It is the Good News which
also needs to be correctly reported.